The title The State of Exception refers not only to a well-known essay by Giorgio Agamben, but also to a shocking and painful exception. From the end of WWII until today this tragic event in recent history has seen one single trial against one single defendant: the 1951 trial in which the Bologna Military Court sentenced Walter Reder to life imprisonment, cut short in 1985 by intercession of the Austrian government.

Another exception is the anomaly of the hundreds of legal files regarding Nazi-Fascist massacres in Italy being stamped with an unusual and inexistent legal order: “Temporarily Archived”. These files were then hidden in the basement of the Head Military Prosecutor’s office in Palazzo Cesi in Rome, and “forgotten” in the infamous “Cabinet of Shame” for 50 years. Many other ex-SS criminals involved in the Monte Sole Massacre could have been tried, but the files were not unearthed until 1994. Italy is a strange country…

Today, 62 years later, new investigations have finally taken place. Thus the exceptional nature of the trial this film follows.  In the La Spezia courtroom, dozens of witnesses, both survivors and relatives of the massacre’s victims, still burdened with the sorrow and horror of those events, testified in an exhausting, emotional, legal “production”. All of this took place in a surreal context: the architecture of the Military Courtroom still evokes its past as a movie theater- a place used to an entirely different kind of production.

The final exception, which elicits both confusion and indignation, is the seeming mockery of the absence of the seventeen ex-SS accused of aggravated assault and murder, in a trial that thus took place in absentia. All 17 defendants chose not to appear in court, preferring to stay far away from any kind of judgment, just as they had for 62 long years.

The trial came to an end on January 13, 2007 with a sentence that proved an important first step: 10 life imprisonments and 7 acquittals. Notable progress down what is still a long road. Appeals and new investigations will determine other responsibilities. More steps will be taken.

Loris Lepri, Germano Maccioni

Credits:

Directed by Germano Maccioni